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Mission

Artistic Director Risa Brainin talks with Jim Sirianni about her creative process
as a director and how UCSB is keeping theater alive for its students and faculty
with LAUNCH PAD's innovative "Alone, Together" Zoom Festival on June 6, 2020.
(Click on the image above.)

Featured in American Theatre magazine as an innovative model of new play development in the U.S., LAUNCH PAD is a high-tech lab for playwrights-in-residence, UCSB theater students, faculty and guest artists. Led by founding Artistic Director Risa Brainin, a new play is developed each year. The residency culminates in a fully realized “Preview Production.” With a mix of student and professional actors, LAUNCH PAD is collaboration and experimentation in action.

The goal for these extended residencies is three-fold:

To intimately expose serious theater students to the working processes of people
who write plays for a living.

To provide a safe and fertile environment for artists to boldly explore new ideas.

To establish UC Santa Barbara as a magnet for the creation of new work.

While professional theaters are not always able to take a risk on fully producing new work, LAUNCH PAD offers the playwright the chance to work on the play in a safe environment with students who are deeply engaged and hungry to learn how this process works. These Preview Productions are fully realized, allowing the playwright to see their work in three dimensions.

“What Risa Brainin has created at UCSB is entirely rare, but extremely necessary, to the ecology of the American Theatre. By fostering relationships between professional writers and her students, Risa is developing a new generation of advocates for the new play, the contemporary voice, and the inherent value of collaboration. Simultaneously, she is offering some of the most talented playwrights in the country a home in which to safely explore, and providing some of the best production values that exist in the theatre today -- in both the professional and academic spheres.”

- Liz Engelman, Dramaturg and Director of Tofte Lake Center, MN

Since its inception in 2005, LAUNCH PAD has produced fifteen plays by distinguished playwrights: